BMW 530XD - Get nice before a sale
At the end of January 2022, I received a car that needed to be reconditioned.
This was a perfect project for me to be able to help the customer get his BMW 530 looking nice and nice for a sale.
The BMW is a 2008 model year and has driven 31,000 miles. The car had a lot of scratches from washing brushes but also some defects such as paint chips etc. which you still have to take into account as the car still drove well.
I have to admit that the BMW engine sounds fantastic despite its age and mileage if I compare it to the four-cylinder engines that I drive around with on a daily basis.
This car was the focus of the exterior so performed primarily an exterior recond.
Of course, the inside was cleaned as the first impression for a new customer who is going to buy a car is very important in my opinion.
- The car was dirty, as you can probably expect during the winter, so no weirdness. However, it is difficult to see from all the dirt how much washing scratches and other blemishes it has, so I started by washing the car.
- After I spray Cold Degreasing to remove all salt and tar and asphalt stains, I also spray on alkaline degreasing to remove organic dirt. I only spray the cold degreaser up to the door handles, while the alkaline spray all over the car. Let the agents work for approx. 10-15 minutes.
Before that time is up, I foam the car with a pre-washer.
- After the car was rinsed off and shampooed, I chose to clay the car with a special clay. We have no history of this car being polished before, and if it has, it was probably a very long time ago. As you can see in the picture, it does not always help with all the chemicals to remove all the dirt. Here the clay is fantastic as it picks up the products sitting in the "pores" of the paint.
You can also, as a tip, run your palm against the varnish carefully and let the varnish sound like you are pulling against sandpaper, so you know you should clay before polishing. If you still think it's difficult to decide, test and clay the car in a few places and the clay doesn't get dirty at all, then the paint on the car is probably clean.
But in the picture below, you can see that the paint needed to be clayed. This was from the hood alone.
- Here are various pictures to show how much washing scratches would be polished away. This car is black metallic but it felt more like gray metallic.
This is the left rear part of the car. As you can see, when you shine a bright light on the car, you see a lot of washing scratches.
All the panels on the car basically looked like this.
- To be able to show you in the best way the difference between an unpolished and a polished car, I did a 50/50 on the hood.
This was just after one pass of rough polishing. But as you can see on the left part of the engine hood, it looks almost greyish, while on the right we start to see the black color again. - Now it's just a matter of continuing to struggle with the rough polishing and then moving on to finer polishing agents. Below are some after pictures so you can see the difference.
Below is the rear door polished.
- Here are some pictures of the finished result. Unfortunately, it rained, but then you can at least see how the cover protects the car's paintwork.
The car also received a glass treatment, which I recommend to everyone to do on their car. The water runs off at high speeds, making it harder for dirt to stick to the windows etc
- Also did a clean interior but nothing that I documented very much.
Hope you like these posts! Mostly want to convey that it is possible to fix cars in simple ways without it being difficult.
Maybe not everyone has a polishing machine or a garage to park in, but then I would at least recommend that you wash the car thoroughly and apply a wax to the car and you will still make the car look good. But the best thing is of course to carry out all the steps because then you will get the best results.
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